January 27, 2017

Britain, going shrivelingly global

For a week I've been meaning to post Roger Cohen's perfect sarcastic assessment of P.M. Theresa May's " 'Global Britain.' She thought about alternative branding — 'Parochial Britain' — but was advised it was unsexy."

On to Cohen's perfection of sarcasm:

For 43 years [Britain] has been a member of an introverted, stifling little entity called the European Union that has just concluded a free trade deal with Canada, has dozens of multilateral and bilateral trade agreements, boasts the United States as its top trading partner, takes some 44 percent of British exports, and accounts for 22 percent of world economic output.

How could Britain possibly be global within this straitjacket?

Such logic also compels Cohen to assess May's thinking as something akin to Trumpism, which is an allegation so rancid, no sarcasm need apply:

I know this is a political moment when black equals white, no means yes, two plus two equals five, and post-truth is the phrase du jour. Still, ["Global Britain"] was a Trump-size whopper from May. She had obviously been steeped in Orwell.

Comments

For a week I've been meaning to post Roger Cohen's perfect sarcastic assessment of P.M. Theresa May's " 'Global Britain.' She thought about alternative branding — 'Parochial Britain' — but was advised it was unsexy."

On to Cohen's perfection of sarcasm:

For 43 years [Britain] has been a member of an introverted, stifling little entity called the European Union that has just concluded a free trade deal with Canada, has dozens of multilateral and bilateral trade agreements, boasts the United States as its top trading partner, takes some 44 percent of British exports, and accounts for 22 percent of world economic output.

How could Britain possibly be global within this straitjacket?

Such logic also compels Cohen to assess May's thinking as something akin to Trumpism, which is an allegation so rancid, no sarcasm need apply:

I know this is a political moment when black equals white, no means yes, two plus two equals five, and post-truth is the phrase du jour. Still, ["Global Britain"] was a Trump-size whopper from May. She had obviously been steeped in Orwell.